Editing Microsoft PowerPoint (section)

===Cultural reactions===
As uses broadened, cultural awareness of PowerPoint grew and commentary about it began to appear. "With the widespread adoption of PowerPoint came complaints ... often very general statements reflecting dissatisfaction with modern media and communication practices as well as the dysfunctions of organizational culture."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Farkas |first=David K. |date=2006 |title=Toward a better understanding of PowerPoint deck design |url=https://faculty.washington.edu/farkas/FarkasTowardUnderstandingPPT.pdf |journal= Information Design Journal|issn=0142-5471 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=162–171 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130830020920/http://faculty.washington.edu/farkas/FarkasTowardUnderstandingPPT.pdf |url-status=live |archive-date=August 30, 2013 |access-date=September 23, 2017|doi=10.1075/idj.14.2.08far }}</ref> Indications of this awareness included increasing mentions of PowerPoint use in the ''[[Dilbert]]'' comic strips of [[Scott Adams]],<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.robertgaskins.com/powerpoint-history/documents/gaskins-comments-on-dilbert-history-of-powerpoint.pdf |title=Comments on Dilbert's History of PowerPoint |last=Gaskins |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Gaskins |date=April 20, 2012 |website=PowerPoint History Documents |type=Draft |pages=59 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140517154506/http://www.robertgaskins.com/powerpoint-history/documents/gaskins-comments-on-dilbert-history-of-powerpoint.pdf |url-status=live |archive-date=May 17, 2014 |access-date=September 23, 2017 |quote=It took ten to fifteen years for PowerPoint to become an everyday topic of popular discourse.}}</ref> comic parodies of poor or inappropriate use such as the [[Gettysburg Address]] in PowerPoint<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/ |title=The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation |last=Norvig |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Norvig |date=January 2000 |website=Peter Norvig personal website |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20001109193600/http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/ |url-status=live |archive-date=November 9, 2000 |access-date=September 22, 2017 |df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/making.html |title=The Making of the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation |last=Norvig |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Norvig |date=2008 |website=Peter Norvig personal website |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081230051340/http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/making.html |url-status=live |archive-date=December 30, 2008 |access-date=September 22, 2017 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> or summaries of Shakespeare's ''Hamlet'' and Nabokov's ''Lolita'' in PowerPoint,<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.radosh.net/writing/ppaol.html |title=The PowerPoint Anthology of Literature |last=Radosh |first=Daniel |author-link=Daniel Radosh |date=2003 |website=Daniel Radosh personal website |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060710004518/http://www.radosh.net/writing/ppaol.html |url-status=live |archive-date=July 10, 2006 |access-date=September 22, 2017}}</ref> and a vast number of publications on the general subject of PowerPoint, especially about how to use it.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=kw%3Apowerpoint&fq=yr%3A1987..2017+%3E&dblist=638 |title=Search Results for 'kw:powerpoint' > '1987..2017' [WorldCat.org] |date=September 29, 2017 |website=OCLC WorldCat Global Catalog |archive-url=https://archive.today/20170929193106/https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=kw:powerpoint&fq=yr:1987..2017+%3E&dblist=638 |url-status=live |archive-date=September 29, 2017 |access-date=September 29, 2017 |quote=All Formats (66,169) ... Print book (23,696), eBook (3,475), Thesis/dissertation (1,078) ... Article (18,085) ... Video (3,537) ... |df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kaplan|first=Sarah|date=2011|title=Strategy and PowerPoint: An Inquiry into the Epistemic Culture and Machinery of Strategy Making|journal=Organization Science|language=en|volume=22|issue=2|pages=320–346|doi=10.1287/orsc.1100.0531|s2cid=37755593 |issn=1047-7039}}</ref>

Out of all the analyses of PowerPoint over a quarter of a century, at least three general themes emerged as categories of reaction to its broader use: (1) "Use it less": avoid PowerPoint in favor of alternatives, such as using more-complex graphics and written prose, or using nothing;<ref name="Tufte-2003-2006" /> (2) "Use it differently": make a major change to a PowerPoint style that is simpler and pictorial, turning the presentation toward a performance, more like a Steve Jobs keynote;<ref name="Mayer-Atkinson-2004" /> and (3) "Use it better": retain much of the conventional PowerPoint style but learn to avoid making many kinds of mistakes that can interfere with communication.<ref name="Kosslyn-2007" />

====Use it less====
{{See also |Edward Tufte|Anti-PowerPoint Party}}
An early reaction was that the broader use of PowerPoint was a mistake, and should be reversed. An influential example of this came from [[Edward Tufte]], an authority on information design, who has been a professor of political science, statistics, and computer science at Princeton and Yale, but is best known for his self-published books on data visualization, which have sold nearly 2&nbsp;million copies as of 2014.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.edwardtufte.com/files/ETresume.pdf |title=Edward R. Tufte, Resume |last1=Tufte |first1=Edward |author-link1=Edward Tufte |date=December 2014 |website=Edward Tufte personal website |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161009173114/http://www.edwardtufte.com/files/ETresume.pdf |url-status=live |archive-date=October 9, 2016 |access-date=September 20, 2017 |quote=1.9&nbsp;million copies of 4 books and 422,000 copies of 4 booklets printed from 1983–2014, and continuing.}}</ref>

In 2003, he published a widely-read booklet titled ''The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint,'' revised in 2006.<ref name="Tufte-2003-2006" /> Tufte found a number of problems with the "cognitive style" of PowerPoint, many of which he attributed to the standard default style templates:<ref name="Tufte-2003-2006" />

{{Blockquote|PowerPoint's convenience for some presenters is costly to the content and the audience. These costs arise from the ''cognitive style characteristics of the standard default PP presentation:'' foreshortening of evidence and thought, low spatial resolution, an intensely hierarchical single-path structure as the model for organizing every type of content, breaking up narratives and data into slides and minimal fragments, rapid temporal sequencing of thin information rather than focused spatial analysis, conspicuous chartjunk and PP Phluff, branding of slides with logotypes, a preoccupation with format not content, incompetent designs for data graphics and tables, and a smirky commercialism that turns information into a sales pitch and presenters into marketeers ''[italics in original]''.}}

Tufte particularly advised against using PowerPoint for reporting scientific analyses, using as a dramatic example some slides made during the flight of the space shuttle ''Columbia'' after it had been damaged by an accident at liftoff, slides which poorly communicated the engineers' limited understanding of what had happened.<ref name="Tufte-2003-2006" />{{Rp|pages=8–14}} For such technical presentations, and for most occasions apart from its initial domain of sales presentations, Tufte advised against using PowerPoint at all; in many situations, according to Tufte, it would be better to substitute high-resolution graphics or concise prose documents as handouts for the audience to study and discuss, providing a great deal more detail.<ref name="Tufte-2003-2006" />

Many commentators enthusiastically joined in Tufte's vivid criticism of PowerPoint uses,<ref>{{Cite news |last=Parks |first=Bob |date=August 30, 2012 |title=Death to PowerPoint! |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-08-30/death-to-powerpoint |url-access=subscription |newspaper=[[Bloomberg Businessweek]] |issn=0007-7135 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150312035814/http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-08-30/death-to-powerpoint |url-status=live |archive-date=March 12, 2015 |access-date=September 23, 2017}}</ref> and at a conference held in 2013 (a decade after Tufte's booklet appeared) one paper claimed that "Despite all the criticism about his work, Tufte can be considered as the single most influential author in the discourse on PowerPoint. ... While his approach was not rigorous from a research perspective, his articles received wide resonance with the public at large ... ."<ref>{{Cite conference |title=10 Years after Tufte's "Cognitive Style of PowerPoint": Synthesizing its Constraining Qualities |url=https://filetea.me/t1szChzbSBbQkuvlhlAXqxljg |last1=Kernbach |first1=Sebastian |last2=Bresciani |first2=Sabrina |chapter=10 Years after Tufte's "Cognitive Style of Power ''Point''": Synthesizing its Constraining Qualities |date=July 16–18, 2013 |conference=Information Visualisation (IV), 2013 17th International Conference |location=London |pages=345–350 |doi=10.1109/IV.2013.44 |isbn=978-1-4799-0834-9 |publisher=IEEE |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6Y8PV6QHI?url=https://filetea.me/t1szChzbSBbQkuvlhlAXqxljg |url-status=dead |archive-date=April 28, 2015 |df=mdy-all |url-access=subscription }}</ref> There were also others who disagreed with Tufte's assertion that the PowerPoint program reduces the quality of presenters' thoughts: [[Steven Pinker]], professor of psychology at MIT and later Harvard, had earlier argued that "If anything, PowerPoint, if used well, would ideally reflect the way we think."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Zuckerman |first=Laurence |date=April 17, 1999 |title=Words Go Right to the Brain, But Can They Stir the Heart?; Some Say Popular Software Debases Public Speaking |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/17/arts/words-go-right-brain-but-can-they-stir-heart-some-say-popular-software-debases.html |newspaper=New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |access-date=September 23, 2017}}</ref> Pinker later reinforced this opinion: "Any general opposition to PowerPoint is just dumb, ... It's like denouncing lectures—before there were awful PowerPoint presentations, there were awful scripted lectures, unscripted lectures, slide shows, chalk talks, and so on."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Feith |first=David |date=July 31, 2009 |title=Speaking Truth to PowerPoint |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204619004574318473921093400 |url-access=subscription |newspaper=Wall Street Journal |issn=0099-9660 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6ZSdhYhA9?url=https://filetea.me/t1sq7c2KUvATqeAdKcx5xc1gQ |url-status=live |archive-date=June 21, 2015 |access-date=September 23, 2017}}</ref>

Much of the early commentary, on all sides, was "informal" and "anecdotal", because empirical research had been limited.<ref>{{Cite conference |title=10 Years after Tufte's "Cognitive Style of PowerPoint": Synthesizing its Constraining Qualities |url=https://filetea.me/t1szChzbSBbQkuvlhlAXqxljg |last1=Kernbach |first1=Sebastian |last2=Bresciani |first2=Sabrina |chapter=10 Years after Tufte's "Cognitive Style of Power ''Point''": Synthesizing its Constraining Qualities |date=July 16–18, 2013 |conference=Information Visualisation (IV), 2013 17th International Conference |location=London |pages=345–350 |doi=10.1109/IV.2013.44 |isbn=978-1-4799-0834-9 |publisher=IEEE |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6Y8PV6QHI?url=https://filetea.me/t1szChzbSBbQkuvlhlAXqxljg |url-status=dead |archive-date=April 28, 2015 |quote=Because every day a huge number of people meet to exchange ideas and make decisions with PowerPoint slides being displayed on the wall, investigating the tool is enormously important ... . Despite the pervasiveness of PowerPoint in our culture there have been few empirical studies and most of the non-empirical work is based on casual essays and informal anecdotal reviews which very often take a polemic and overall negative position on PowerPoint, rather than conducting formal scholarship. This lack of rigorous studies and empirical research is surprising given the enormous complexity and importance of the PowerPoint tool. |df=mdy-all |url-access=subscription }}</ref>

====Use it differently====
{{See also|Richard E. Mayer |Stevenote |label 2=Steve Jobs Keynotes}}
A second reaction to PowerPoint use was to say that PowerPoint can be used well, but only by substantially changing its style of use. This reaction is exemplified by [[Richard E. Mayer]], a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied cognition and learning, particularly the design of educational multimedia, and who has published more than 500 publications, including over 30 books.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.psych.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/mayer |title=Richard Mayer |date=2017 |website=Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of California at Santa Barbara, faculty directory |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170617030504/https://www.psych.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/mayer |url-status=dead |archive-date=June 17, 2017 |access-date=September 23, 2017 |quote=Dr. Mayer is concerned with how to present information in ways that help people understand, including how to use words and pictures to explain scientific and mathematical concepts.}}</ref> Mayer's theme has been that "In light of the science, it is up to us to make a fundamental shift in our thinking—we can no longer expect people to struggle to try to adapt to our PowerPoint habits. Instead, we have to change our PowerPoint habits to align with the way people learn."<ref name="Mayer-Atkinson-2004" />

Tufte had argued his judgment that the information density of text on PowerPoint slides was too low, perhaps only 40 words on a slide, leading to over-simplified messages;<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tufte |first=Edward |author-link=Edward Tufte |year=2006 |orig-year=1st ed. 2003, 24 pg. |title=The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within |edition=2nd |location=Cheshire, Connecticut |publisher=Graphics Press LLC |isbn=978-0-9613921-6-1 |pages=4, 15 |quote=very little information per slide ... the text is grossly impoverished .. the PowerPoint slide typically shows 40 words ... .}}</ref> Mayer responded that his empirical research showed exactly the opposite, that the amount of text on PowerPoint slides was usually too high, and that even fewer than 40 words on a slide resulted in "PowerPoint overload" that impeded understanding during presentations.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228893840 |title=Five ways to reduce PowerPoint overload |last1=Atkinson |first1=Cliff |last2=Mayer |first2=Richard E. |author-link2=Richard E. Mayer |date=April 23, 2004 |version=Revision 1.1 |website=ResearchGate |format=PDF |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6ZMK2qMHz?url=https://filetea.me/t1sWlhUAjlwTqxmEj6Ds9ZT4Q |url-status=live |archive-date=June 17, 2015 |access-date=September 23, 2017 |quote=... it is conventional wisdom to put no more than six lines of text on a PowerPoint slide, six words per line. But that convention is no longer wise in the light of research that shows that even that amount of text on a slide can be a recipe for information overload.}}</ref>

Mayer suggested a few major changes from traditional PowerPoint formats:<ref name="Mayer-Atkinson-2004" />

* replacing brief slide titles with longer "headlines" expressing complete ideas;
* showing more slides but simpler ones;
* removing almost all text including nearly all bullet lists (reserving the text for the spoken narration);
* using larger, higher-quality, and more important graphics and photographs;
* removing all extraneous decoration, backgrounds, logos and identifications, everything but the essential message.

Mayer's ideas are claimed by [[Carmine Gallo]] to have been reflected in Steve Jobs's presentations: "Mayer outlined fundamental principles of multimedia design based on what scientists know about cognitive functioning. Steve Jobs's slides adhere to each of Mayer's principles ... ."<ref name="Gallo-2009">{{Cite book |last=Gallo |first=Carmine |author-link=Carmine Gallo |year=2009 |title=The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs |publisher=McGraw-Hill |isbn=978-0-07-163608-7}}</ref>{{Rp|page=92}} Though not unique to Jobs, many people saw the style for the first time in Jobs's famous product introductions.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Gallo |first=Carmine |author-link=Carmine Gallo |date=September 7, 2012 |title=Jeff Bezos and The End of PowerPoint As We Know It |url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/09/07/jeff-bezos-and-the-end-of-powerpoint-as-we-know-it/ |newspaper=Forbes |issn=0015-6914 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150325150413/http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/09/07/jeff-bezos-and-the-end-of-powerpoint-as-we-know-it/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=March 25, 2015 |access-date=September 24, 2017 |quote=And no, Steve Jobs did not invent the style. He just happened to use it very effectively.}}</ref> Steve Jobs would have been using Apple's [[Keynote (presentation software)|Keynote]], which was designed for Jobs's own slide shows beginning in 2003, but Gallo says that "speaking like Jobs has little to do with the type of presentation software you use (PowerPoint, Keynote, etc.) ... all the techniques apply equally to PowerPoint and Keynote."<ref name="Gallo-2009" />{{Rp|pages=14,46}} Gallo adds that "Microsoft's PowerPoint has one big advantage over Apple's Keynote presentation software—it's everywhere ... it's safe to say that the number of Keynote presentations is minuscule in comparison with PowerPoint. Although most presentation designers who are familiar with both formats prefer to work in the more elegant Keynote system, those same designers will tell you that the majority of their client work is done in PowerPoint."<ref name="Gallo-2009" />{{Rp|page=44}}

Consistent with its association with Steve Jobs's keynotes, a response to this style has been that it is particularly effective for "ballroom-style presentations" (as often given in conference center ballrooms) where a celebrated and practiced speaker addresses a large passive audience, but less appropriate for "conference room-style presentations" which are often recurring internal business meetings for in-depth discussion with motivated counterparts.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gabrielle |first=Bruce R. |year=2010 |title=Speaking PowerPoint: The New Language of Business |publisher=Insights Publishing |isbn=978-0-9842360-4-6 |pages=16–17}}</ref>

====Use it better====
{{See also |Stephen Kosslyn}}
A third reaction to PowerPoint use was to conclude that the standard style is capable of being used well, but that many small points need to be executed carefully, to avoid impeding understanding. This kind of analysis is particularly associated with [[Stephen Kosslyn]], a cognitive neuroscientist who specializes in the psychology of learning and visual communication, and who has been head of the department of psychology at Harvard, has been Director of Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and has published some 300 papers and 14 books.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.minerva.kgi.edu/people/stephen-kosslyn/ |title=Stephen M. Kosslyn, Ph.D., Dean of Arts and Sciences |date=2017 |website=Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute (Claremont Colleges) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160301232956/https://www.minerva.kgi.edu/people/stephen-kosslyn/ |url-status=live |archive-date=March 1, 2016 |access-date=September 24, 2017}}</ref>

Kosslyn presented a set of psychological principles of "human perception, memory, and comprehension" that "appears to capture the major points of agreement among researchers."<ref name="Kosslyn-et-al=2012">{{Cite journal |last1=Kosslyn |first1=Stephen M. |author-link1=Stephen Kosslyn |last2=Kievit |first2=Rogier A. |last3=Russell |first3=Alexandra G. |last4=Shephard |first4=Jennifer M. |date=July 17, 2012 |title=PowerPoint Presentation Flaws and Failures: A Psychological Analysis |journal=Frontiers in Psychology |issn=1664-1078 |volume=3 |issue=230 |pages=230 |doi=10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00230 |pmid=22822402 |pmc=3398435 |df=mdy-all |doi-access=free }}</ref> He reports that his experiments support the idea that it is not intuitive or obvious how to create effective PowerPoint presentations that conform to those agreed principles, and that even small differences that might not seem significant to a presenter can produce very different results in audiences' understanding. For this reason, Kosslyn says, users need specific education to be able to identify best ways to avoid "flaws and failures":<ref name="Kosslyn-et-al=2012" />

{{Blockquote|Specifically, we hypothesized and found that the psychological principles are often violated in PowerPoint slideshows across different fields ..., that some types of presentation flaws are noticeable and annoying to audience members ..., and that observers have difficulty identifying many violations in graphical displays in individual slides ... . These studies converge in painting the following picture: PowerPoint presentations are commonly flawed; some types of flaws are more common than others; flaws are not isolated to one domain or context; and, although some types of flaws annoy the audience, flaws at the level of slide design are not always obvious to an untrained observer ... .}}

The many "flaws and failures" identified were those "likely to disrupt the comprehension or memory of the material." Among the most common examples were "Bulleted items are not presented individually, growing the list from the top to the bottom," "More than four bulleted items appear in a single list," "More than two lines are used per bulleted sentence," and "Words are not large enough (i.e., greater than 20 point) to be easily seen." Among audience reactions common problems reported were "Speakers read word-for-word from notes or from the slides themselves," "The slides contained too much material to absorb before the next slide was presented," and "The main point was obscured by lots of irrelevant detail."<ref name="Kosslyn-et-al=2012" />

Kosslyn observes that these findings could help to explain why the many studies of the instructional effectiveness of PowerPoint have been inconclusive and conflicting, if there were differences in the quality of the presentations tested in different studies that went unobserved because "many may feel that 'good design' is intuitively clear."<ref name="Kosslyn-et-al=2012" />

In 2007 Kosslyn wrote a book about PowerPoint, in which he suggested a very large number of fairly modest changes to PowerPoint styles and gave advice on recommended ways of using PowerPoint.<ref name="Kosslyn-2007" /> In a later second book about PowerPoint he suggested nearly 150 clarifying style changes (in fewer than 150 pages).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kosslyn |first=Stephen M. |author-link=Stephen Kosslyn |year=2010 |title=Better PowerPoint: Quick Fixes Based on How Your Audience Thinks |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-537675-3}}</ref> Kosslyn summarizes:<ref name="Kosslyn-2007" />{{Rp|pages=2–3,200}}

{{Blockquote| ... there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the PowerPoint program as a medium; rather, I claim that the problem lies in how it is used. ... In fact, this medium is a remarkably versatile tool that can be extraordinarily effective. ... For many purposes, PowerPoint presentations are a superior medium of communication, which is why they have become standard in so many fields.}}

In 2017, an online poll of social media users in the UK was reported to show that PowerPoint "remains as popular with young tech-savvy users as it is with the Baby Boomers," with about four out of five saying that "PowerPoint was a great tool for making presentations," in part because "PowerPoint, with its capacity to be highly visual, bridges the wordy world of yesterday with the visual future of tomorrow."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Burn-Callander |first=Rebecca |date=April 24, 2017 |title=Your attention, please, for the software we love to hate: PowerPoint celebrates its 30th birthday |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/04/23/powerpoint-celebrates-30th-birthday/ |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |issn=0307-1235 |department=Business |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6rrW6PL5n?url=https://filetea.me/n3wt2GSIIdrSaG4OKObsDPCbw |url-access=subscription <!-- but archive is ungated --> |url-status=live |archive-date=July 10, 2017 |access-date=July 10, 2017 |quote=... with new research showing that it remains as popular with young tech-savvy users as it is with the Baby Boomers. An online poll by YouGov showed that 81 per cent of UK Snapchat users agreed that PowerPoint was a great tool for making presentations. ... long -form prose has become increasingly unpopular with modern users. PowerPoint, with its capacity to be highly visual, bridges the wordy world of yesterday with the visual future of tomorrow. |df=mdy-all }}</ref>

Also in 2017, the Managerial Communication Group of [[MIT Sloan School of Management]] polled their incoming MBA students, finding that "results underscore just how differently this generation communicates as compared with older workers."<ref name="mit-sloan-2017">{{Cite web |url=http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/3-surprising-ways-that-millennials-communicate/ |title=How millennials approach writing, giving presentations, and data visualization diverges from previous generations |last=Baskin |first=Kara |date=October 4, 2017 |website=MIT Sloan School of Management |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171004150949/http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/3-surprising-ways-that-millennials-communicate/ |archive-date=October 4, 2017 |url-status=live |access-date=October 7, 2017 |quote=""Communication is part of everyone's job, but millennials do it differently," said MIT Sloan lecturer Miro Kazakoff, who co-authored the study with MIT Sloan senior lecturer Kara Blackburn."}}</ref> Fewer than half of respondents reported doing any meaningful, longer-form writing at work, and even that minority mostly did so very infrequently, but "85 percent of students named producing presentations as a meaningful part of their job responsibilities. Two-thirds report that they present on a daily or weekly basis—so it's no surprise that in-person presentations is the top skill they hope to improve."<ref name="mit-sloan-2017" /> One of the researchers concluded: "We're not likely to see future workplaces with long-form writing. The trend is toward presentations and slides, and we don't see any sign of that slowing down."<ref name="mit-sloan-2017" />